I believe the portion that is being referred to as the "tax" is the penalty an individual would have to pay if they were found to not be covered. That WOULD be going to the government.

Because a lot of younger, healthier people are now going to be buying in, costs may actually come DOWN.

The federal government has done this for decades. Goes back to Nixon, who got universal adoption of the 55 MPH speed limit from all states--despite highways being a state responsibility--by threatening to withhold federal highway taxes.

I actually agree with your "tail-wags-the-dog" sentiment, especially when Dan Dodge (former head of QNX) is now a senior RIM VP. It isn't a bad thing at all; QNX has a solid business all their own and now it broadens RIM's reach and increases its potential market.

The Palm comparison only works on a superficial level, though. For one thing, RIM is still profitable, with a fair wad of cash in the bank. They actually have time to make this work. Palm MIGHT have made it work with more money, and getting acquired by a company for whom mobile wasn't a core business didn't help them out at all.

There are a few very important areas where the RIM/Palm comparison falls apart: 1) RIM has made a couple of crucial acquisitions with QNX and TAT, essentially buying the most important parts of the OS. 2) Portability is going to be key to BB10's success; the ability to port apps (extremely) easily from iOS and Android means it's very easy for a developer to decide to support the platform. 3) It's a "content" market now, not a "device" market, and RIM has some pretty good partnerships. Their music store is actually very good now, and in some ways I prefer it to iTunes. Music is roughly the same price, and, like Apple, there's no DRM. Palm had no such partnerships.

In the case of RIM (and that is who we're discussing here), they are building absolutely the best HTML infrastructure for their devices. Better-than-desktop standards compatibility and rendering. The browser in the Playbook is among the very best for HTML5 compatibility and rendering, and the browsers in the BB10 prototypes are the VERY best available right now.

Java is basically a resource-sucking abstraction layer. Native code is much more efficient in every way (lower memory footprint, easier execution). That said, HTML5 isn't a bad choice for certain lightweight tasks. An accomplished developer or team can break down the needed functionality of an app and figure out which functions are best executed on which platform. Where BB10 has a chance is in the new UI, which will have all kinds of goodies baked in and written in native code. If it works (and there's still some question, for sure), it stands a chance of not just performing better than Android and iOS, but even introducing new functionality.

The QNX core should, in theory, provide better security and performance than Android. Android developers can port their apps over either as BB10 native code or as converted apk's, and have exposure to two different markets. Yesterday, a game developer demonstrated that they could recompile one of their iOS apps with minimal re-coding and had it running on BB10 in minutes. I know of at least one Android dev who claims to be getting much better sales with his Playbook app than he got with the original Android app he ported it from.

Yes, I agree. The raw data is only as useful as its interpretation. If the resources aren't out there to conduct that interpretation properly, then it invalidates the whole approach.

This is not to far away from the rape kits that have been stockpiled all over the US because the money isn't there to send them off to the crime lab.

GPS tracking is an outstanding concept. It allows convicts to live out in the world, with the understanding that if they cross certain geographic boundaries, they run the risk of intervention from the law. This can aid rehabilitation, if those boundaries are enforced, and it saves a pantload of money on housing them in jail.

One use I'd like to see: many repeat drunk drivers find ways to get access to vehicles, even with lifetime license bans. Set an alert on such a convict so that if they're travelling over, say, 30 mph, it sends an alert and if there's a patrol nearby, get them to pull the vehicle over and see if the convict is the one behind the wheel. Even if he isn't, it sends the message that he is always running the risk of being caught...

Windows 7 was expected to be a better performer than Vista right out of the gate, and if you paid attention to Microsoft's timeline you'd understand why. Here's the quick-and-dirty rundown: Windows XP was codenamed "Whistler", for the BC ski mountain, and essentially represented what was meant to be the ultimate development of the NT kernel. The next version was codenamed "Blackcomb" (for another ski mountain neighboring Whistler), and was intended to be a radical shift in the codebase to rely more on the .NET platform. The shift would be huge, and disruptive, since it would require a whole new driver model and would use new technologies for communications and presentation. It would, in fact, be such a disruptive shift that Microsoft elected to create an "interim" version that would maintain compatibility for the most part. The inside joke here is that the code name for this interim version was taken from a bar located right in between Whistler and Blackcomb, namely the "Longhorn". The trouble with "Longhorn" (which we all know and love now as Windows Vista) was that the attempt to maintain compatibility--AND improve security--led to some significant performance issues. Windows 7 resolves these issues, and it was always intended to. As it happens, netbooks have come on the scene, and they'll clearly have an impact for years to come. In many ways, these really are truly "personal" computers, and the technology has finally matured to the point that such machines can be both cheap and genuinely useful. It's just a happy coincidence that MS has been finalizing a leaner, better-performing OS to run on them

...but I'm definitely frustrated to have not one but TWO Barracuda 7200.11 drives fail. The first was DOA, and the RMA'd replacement just failed after only a few weeks. I've heard rumors that Seagate is returning different drives to customers. Like, larger ones. I'll wait and see.

You know, this technology could be used to distribute porn, too... ;)